Ultimately, all of my branding services come with the same result: To beat your competition. Without that goal, what’s the point?
Too much effort and money are spent in branding and marketing with little result. While ROI is a flawed measurement, your market share and bottom line will tell what’s working – and what’s not.
Think about brand differently
For your brand to be preferred, you must be different and better than your competition. Copying the market leader only helps the market leader. Because when all choices are too similar, audiences default to the most well-known.
To become that true choice, you must understand three things: 1, The emotional triggers of your audience; 2, what the competition promises; 3, what you truly makes you unique. Ultimately, most offer the same products and benefits. Therefore, the greatest differentiator is an emotional brand.
Think about this. If your brand is an emotional reflection of your target audience, they are incapable of choosing someone else. Because, with you, they are essentially choosing themselves.
Too often, brand messaging is from the inside-out. That is, from the perspective of the company. Create preference with brand messaging from the perspective of your audience. Less “we,” more “you.”
Execution
Executing that position and its underlying messages is always important. A few rules:
Don’t be clever. Clever never works because it’s seen by audiences as simply marketing. It doesn’t feel like the truth.
You will get tired of your messages long before your target audiences do. All of us are overwhelmed with marketing messages each day. We unconsciously filter out the ones that are meaningless to us. (That’s why most marketing is ignored.) Consistency is always key.
Be single-minded. One of the reasons why Apple markets so well is because it delivers its messages simply and directly. No one, especially in today’s information age, has time to weed through all the details.
Look for the emotion. As much as we want to think we choose rationally, we don’t. We choose emotionally. Think about laundry detergent. Why do you prefer the brand you use? Did you actually compare all the brands? Of course not. You’re not insane. We choose emotionally as a way to filter out all the choices, then backfill that choice with rational reasons.
Brand consultant
As a brand consultant, I’ll help get you on the winning side. For example, I serve as a senior brand strategist for eDesign Interactive as a contract consultant.
I help create the emotional story that makes their work more engaging and creates brand preference. I start in the discovery phase leading internal interviews, competitive analysis, and any primary or secondary research.
At that point, I work with the eDesign team to develop the single most persuasive message the client can say to create preference and engagement.
From that, comes the story itself: A home page story frame that tells the story and sets up your experts in wireframing the pages, developing a site map and, most of all, creating design.
If you’re a design agency, I can bring that value to your work.
But my experience goes further back than that. I served as a Senior Brand Strategist at branding company Stealing Share for more than a decade, leading branding efforts for companies large and small, here in the US and globally.
You can find more about me on my bio page or at LinkedIn. You’ll see that everything I do helps you feel proud of your brand.
Because it’ll be a winner.
Branding Services
Brand strategy
Brand positioning
Brand messaging
Website strategy
Market research (including designing the research and implementing it into the field)
Copywriting
Brand audit (analyzing your brand for strengths and weaknesses)
Competitive analysis (finding where the opportunity lies)
General consulting
Presenting
Creative briefs (what your creative team needs to successfully execute the project)